I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, the Yakuza series is a magical little bundle of madness and joy in every single way. Partly a spectacle fighter, part crime thriller, part visual novel, part anime, and completely mental. It is mad to think that Mark Hamill played Goro Majima before his reprisal of The Joker in games, and somehow Yakuza never took off in the west. You’d think with names like Eliza Dushku, Michael Madsen, Rachael Leigh Cook, Mark Hamill, and Alan Dale, just to name a few, the broader media-focused press would have done all the PR work for Sega in 2005.

I’ll tell you while they didn’t. To put it politely, Yakuza does not work as a voiced game in English. Yakuza as a series is such a foreign unbelievable world that is both tongue-in-cheek and unbelievably strong with its story. For example, Hideo Kojima’s plots are nonsense and will do some powerful moments, but the absurdity is so high it comes full loop and it becomes widely accepted for some reason.

Yakuza feels foreign yet grounded enough that when it’s not in Japanese, it feels like anything else in English. It isn’t as distant, and for many, Japan is a remote land they know little of. In English, especially with American accents, there is possibly something in our heads that tells us we should be hanging on every word. That’s something you can’t do with Yakuza since it has a rather, oddball Japanese writing style, with moments that start off serious and delve into toilet humor in some cases. In an American accent, it just makes the comedy dry and the serious emotional moments lacking something.

Reading the larger plot and the visual novel-like aspects, even in English, somewhat lets those outlandish bits land better than they do while voiced in English. It may be part of the scenarios you’ll find yourself in, as the entire premise of host and hostess clubs to us in the west congers the idea of pervy old men fawning and drooling over young women. If you’ve played a Yakuza game or know Japan well enough, you know that it is pervy salarymen. However, there is an irregular innocence to it that we know men (mostly men) in the west would abuse.

I know, the entire misconception of hostess clubs being pervy is in my head, but we all bring baggage to a game or piece of entertainment. The reason WWE doesn’t have men and women fighting each other is because of the emotional baggage of domestic abuse. Whether you like it or not, depictions of gay or trans characters in a poor light has a load of baggage for those people that did enjoy and connect with those characters. So when I’m playing as a thirty-something man who’s looking after a very young woman and moonlighting as a floor manager for a hostess club, I might have some baggage.

I’ve prattled on about non-sequiturs long enough, Yakuza as a series follows Kazuma Kiryu, a man convicted of a crime he didn’t commit. There are other characters, but he is our center, our lead character through several games. In the first, he’s the fall guy for a plot which sees him on the run from his clan, after being framed for the murder of Sera-san, the third chairman. From there you find out ten million Yen has been stolen, there are deeper plots under that which you must uncover, and so on so forth. There is conspiracy, murder, bombs, and all the normal boring stuff. A normal day for a Yakuza member.

In that time Kiryu-san both became the 4th chairman of the clan, and subsequently retired as a Yakuza for the rest of time, all on the same day. Or that was the plan anyway. Yes, several games on, with heartstrings being pulled in every-which-way, and a lot of bicycles smashed against faces, Kiryu-san always finds it hard to leave the life of organized crime. Yakuza Kiwami 2, “Kiwami” itself translating to “extreme,” is a complete remake of the 2006 PlayStation 2 exclusive that I’ve already mentioned didn’t take off as much as it would in later life.

Thanks to cult appeal, many of the games have been released once again on PS3 and 4, with the first two getting complete overall-hauls. To the extreme one might say. The plot is largely the same, just with slightly prettier graphics that still hold up well enough. That is the advantage of not using complete photo-realism. The neon is more neon, the faces are more face-like, and there is now a slight bit of color correction to everything. All is well and good, making it the same solid game of the PS2-era.

That is why I love the series so much, it came from, and continued to be a PlayStation 2 game with easily one of the strongest stories arched over many years. Since 2013, we’ve had the hairy-dad game, I don’t need Kratos looking after a child I’d rather punt over a mountain, or Joel being despicable to protect a character I love to death. I just need a very angry Japanese man that will rip another man in two from the anus to the eyebrows, put some fireworks in him, and watch him burn from the inside, just to protect Sawamura-chan.

As I’ve said, the story is true to that of the 2006 release, but Kiwami has a few additions to gameplay. The Hostess clubs weren’t a thing, in fact, in the first game you could be the pervy salaryman sitting at a table drinking Saké with a young woman. I assume the same was the case for the second game, though they were originally removed from the English release of 3, until the recent re-release on PS4 with the Remastered collection. As I’ve said, the hang-ups are all personal, knowing every man over the age of 25 will say something wrong, and anyone under the age of 18 will be yelling “Boobies!”

Though adding to the story is Majima-san himself resurfacing like Oscar the Grouch. I love him, he’s just a mad piece of energy that will be your best friend one minute and then try to kick your face off the next. With his added story continuing from Yakuza 0, the 6th game in the series, he also brings the Clan Creator gameplay where you’ll have allies join you through subplots, little quests, and so on. At first, I like the idea of it all. It is giving you extra allies to fight alongside you, however, I don’t like the gameplay of it.

The Clan Creator, returning from the 7th game Yakuza 6, is a rather dull and lackluster real-time strategy with a planning stage before the first wave. If it had a little more depth, or if I wasn’t using a controller, I might like it a bit more. Pitting it against the spectacle of fighting the Yakuza in the streets, I really don’t care for it. The act of punching and kicking in street fights is endlessly satisfying if you get to bash a man in the head with a bicycle from time to time. Though ordering several men around on a rather monotonous field of battle with little to no response, doesn’t give that same satisfaction.

The only thing I’ve found enjoyable through the Clan Creator is Mutoh-san, Chono-san, Choshu-san, Tenryu-san, and Fujinami-san. I’ve made it no secret that I love wrestling, and those five are some of the legends of Japanese wrestling. I won’t lie, I have a massive grin on my face every time I see The Great Muta ready to stomp a man’s face in, all while wearing a suit. It is a shame I don’t care for the gameplay they are connected with.

While we’re in a bit of “I don’t like or care for this,” I want to bring up performance and loading. In some sections of Kamurocho or Sotenbori, the Xbox One can have a little bit of an issue keeping up with all the neon and people. It might not be a real issue for Xbox One X users, but those on the standard Xbox One or One S might see frame rates drop just below 30 frames per second. It is disappointing, as the PS4 can handle Yakuza 0 and the Remastered Collection like a champ. Not to mention, load times can be longer than you’d think they should be, some taking between 30-45 seconds.

Other than those minor points, Yakuza Kiwami 2 is what every Yakuza game is: Madcap brilliance. I wish there was more time in the day so I could just play Yakuza games all day, though much like any vacation, I’m going to have to leave Japan once again wanting more. Collecting all of the games together, there are hundreds of hours of collectible hunting, fighting in the streets, running hostess clubs, and unraveling mysterious plots, yet it always leaves you wanting more. Kiwami 2 is just a small portion of a larger series that I can not recommend enough, if you’ve not already, go pick it up or play it on Game Pass.

An Xbox One review copy of Yakuza Kiwami 2 (including the Clan Creator bundle) was provided by Sega for this review.

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Yakuza Kiwami 2

$19.99

8

Score

8.0/10

Pros

• Continuing the exelent story.
• Beautiful open-world to explore.
• Skilled combat, but stylish button mashing.
• The feature of New Japan Pro legends.

Cons

• Less than desired performance.
• The Clan Creator gameplay isn't all that exciting.